10 ways to clean your dirty keyboard by Jessica Hodges

It’s so hard to keep keyboards clean, no matter how neat and tidy you are with your lunch. (All those under-achievers out there who actually eat on their lunch breaks instead of eating with one hand and typing with the other, well I they probably don’t understand why your keyboard is always so gross.) Before you throw out your keyboard, consider some of these options: (reactive and preventive)

REACTIVE

1. Shake it out!

I did this alll the time when I had a normal keyboard (the Mac ones tend to get less junk in them. yay!) Just tip your keyboard upside down OVER the garbage can and smack it a bunch of times with the palm of your hand. It’s depressing how much stuff actually comes out.

2. Tape up all the crumbs

Use a piece of tape and go across the keyboard, targeting specific problem areas.

3. Use a mascara wand?

It’s weird! But it works. They have all these great bristles that just pick up stuff. Make sure you get off all the old mascara first because you will just add to your mess if you drag a black paint brush all over your keyboard.

4. Buy a Can of Air

Worth every penny. Blast your keyboard and your desk with AIR! You can stock up on air dusters on our site.

5. Try Cyber Clean

Cyber Clean is this gooey stuff that cleans everything. Imagine taking around playdough and sticking it to everything. Remember how play dough would always pick up dirt and anything else that you would stick to it? This stuff works even better! Buy it

6. Vacuum it up

Get a special keyboard vacuum cleaner or just use your good old vacuum cleaner to get crumbs. Just be careful that you don’t scratch up your keyboard, vacuum up important papers on accident, or drive your co-workers crazy by vacuuming everyday!

Preventive

7. Get a Washable Keyboard

You wouldn’t be having this problem if you could just dunk your keyboard in a sink full of hot, soapy water. I had one of these keyboards at work and they are great! Obviously not the most high-tech or comfortable keyboards but I love the stark, clean white and I love that you can get water all over it. Buy it

8. Choose Keyboard Protection

I haven’t tried these fellowes keyboard protection kits but they seem like a good idea? Anyone who has used these or does use these, comment and let us know if you like them! I’ve never tried them out.

9. Be Classy with Keyboard Napkins

Haha these are funny. At first I thought you would use it to cover your keyboard while you ate and didn’t work but then I realized you can cover it AND keep working. Cool! I guess you can’t buy this one anywhere yet (maybe you can make it?) but here’s more about the artist

“finally, for that crap that’s wedged way in there you’ll have to laboriously remove your keys one by one. Remember to take a digital photo of the keyboard before so you can remember the layout. Or you can print out a photo or illustration of a standard keyboard to use as reference.

Using a butter knife, gently wedge each key upward until it clicks free. The space bar, Shift, Return and Enter keys,are probably attached to a secondary metal or plastic support so leave those in and vacuum around them after you’ve gotten the rest of the keys out.

Dump the keys in a bucket with water and dish soap. Let sit while you tend to the board.

Vacuum the board and use an alcohol swabbed paper towel to clean sticky residue. Turn back to your keys and wipe them clean with a towel. Let both the board and keys air dry overnight. ”

Last Resort, get a new keyboard, tear all the keyboards off your old keyboard, and make something like this:::